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I agree that it’s a complex interaction between our immune system and so many other things that can cause symptoms and we don’t know yet what they all are. I remember first learning in college (nursing major) about the many diseases that are now understood to have autoimmune connections such as type 1 diabetes. How viruses can trigger autoimmune disease!
I’ve read in studies how Covid ( both infected and even healthy but vaccinated people) can have similar effects of inflammation that can resolve or sometimes persist.
That antigenic stimulation (again, either from viral or bacterial infections, and even allergies or vaccinations (rarely) might trigger things to get mistakes in coding. Then lead to different autoimmune disorders especially women tend to have more.
My very healthy mom was diagnosed with systemic scleroderma in her late 70s- no prior history for her or our family.
I think stress has a big role in our immune system too.
Bottom line we do what we can to be mentally and physically healthy and hope for the best!
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Absolutely.
A severe case of mononucleosis (EBV) at 18 may have triggered all sorts of “problems” for me.
Vitiligo surprised me at 22 when I was shopping for a wedding dress: “I have a map of the world across my chest.”
This was diagnosed but not treated. Over the years GPs checked my thyroid labs but I had nothing but anemia which was treated off and on as necessary.
Hypothyroidism wasn’t rearing its head until I was about forty. Since then it has been odd and difficult infections, often life threatening, requiring surgeries and hospitalizations, and the collecting of autoimmune disorders, a constellation of symptoms and rheumatological disease.
I wonder and research. There have to be more connections than we have unearthed or explained yet.
You bring up very important links about which we do know something but have not yet been able to treat well or fully understand!
A major problem is also related to women in chronic pain; we are literally the collateral damage of the medical system.
Thank you very much, sincerely.
I love to discuss these topics and they feel like the connections between life or simply survival mode to me.
(Chem-Bio pre med, but decided to teach and then raise/educate my children at home. So, fortunately, I already lived my greatest dream!)
Now I want to be able to really live and be as active as possible again; I am currently dreadfully slow and cannot imagine decades ahead with progressive symptoms and pain.
(Maybe I am just a wimp.)